


Time

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Does not end happy, It was meant to, M/M, but never mind, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:22:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6718528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean worries after Amara takes Lucifier, and Castiel starts to realise something is wrong with the Devil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> This was seriously meant to end happily. It doesn't. Sorry.

Cas was right in front of him. For a handful of seconds, Cas was right in front of Dean, and was Cas. And Dean let those seconds slide through the hourglass, watched Lucifer snatch back control. 

Worse - Crowley seemed to think Cas had given up control, that he hadn’t really known it was Dean. Not properly.

“We can’t trust what Crowley said,” Sam says, tapping his fingers on the edge of the war-room table. 

Dean sees the way Sam looks at him, somehow managing to give the impression he’s watching Dean out of the corner of his eyes, even though they’re facing each other across the table. It’s the way Sam looks when he’s worried Dean’s going to do something stupid. But that’s pointless. Dean’s already done something stupid. He’s blown his chance to talk Cas back.

“We can’t afford not to,” Dean says.

Sam just doesn’t get the bond Crowley and Dean have. Dean doesn’t want it. Fuck, he doesn’t. But somehow Crowley’s burrowed in and become someone Dean can’t shake, much though he wants to. And Dean knows, better than he ever did before the black eyes and the skin full of smoke, when Crowley’s lying. At least, he has more chance than most at working it out.

Crowley wasn’t lying when he stood next to the Impala outside that church and told Dean in tones of flat iron that Cas has given up. Given in. 

“You really think Cas is, what, just hunkered down in his own vessel, catching up on Game of Thrones?” Sam asks.

“He holed up in your room for long enough,” Dean says. “Not like it’s a wild swing away from his M.O.”

It’s taken years to see it, but Dean’s just about got the sense of it now. Cas runs. He fights, too, but not to save himself unless his back’s to the wall, and then he’ll tear apart anything he needs to, will tear through anything he needs to, to get free. He’s never properly told Dean half the crap he’s been through, Dean’s aware, but just from the fractured edges of things, the slivers of story Cas lets slip in passing, Dean’s built a picture of the angel slaughtering his way through barriers. Even if those barriers are other angels. 

But Cas has some things he won’t face, and those he runs and hides from. 

Sam pulls a face, his lips turning down as though he’s conceding the point and isn’t happy about it. 

“Right. Well. How’d we get him to come out fighting?”

Dean shrugs.

“I’ve got no clue. Not like we’ve got an angel bell we can ring to signal the fight’s starting. If he’s really shut down in there…”

The beer by Dean’s elbow is half-drunk and less wanted, but he takes a moment to pick it up and tip more of the liquid down his throat. It’s better than letting the rest of that sentence out into the world.

He still hasn’t found an answer to that question by the time he gives in to his exhaustion and rolls into bed, his mind a low buzz of static where he needs it to be full of ideas.

***************************************

Inside his vessel, Castiel sits inches from the TV set and stares. The images are blurry, indistinct. They weren’t always like this, he’s sure, but it’s hard to care. Far harder than any effort is worth. 

Across from him, Lucifer slumps in a seat. He holds a towel to his face, the white stained with blood, and he watches Castiel with narrowed eyes.

“Are you just going to keep sitting there?” Lucifer asks.

Castiel doesn’t jump. He doesn’t flinch or lean back. He doesn’t react at all, not even to shrug. 

“What would you have me do?” he asks. “I said yes. I’ve done my part. I’m just waiting for the battle.”

Lucifer frowns, pulling the towel away from his face and staring down at it as though to check it’s really there. Or maybe he’s checking the blood is there, a spreading rose of crimson that almost looks pretty. Castiel finds it in himself to wonder, briefly, how Lucifer came to be bleeding. But the image on the screen shifts, clearing enough he can make out a suburban house from the 50s, and he lets the thought slip away.

“Battle?” Lucifer asks. 

“Yes.” 

That doesn’t even warrant a glance at the archangel. 

Castiel is confused, in any case, when he lets himself think about it. He’s confused as to why Lucifer looks the way he does, human and cramped and limited. Castiel knows he’s appearing as Jimmy, but it’s a costume he’s worn for so long it feels sometimes the real mask is his celestial visage, that ‘angel’ is a performance piece he’s lost the knack for.

Why Lucifer, who hates humanity, would degrade himself this way in this space which is as much thought as anything, holds little sense. Lucifer should be bright and shining, the many limbed, many faceted creature which had picked Castiel up by the scruff of his neck and slammed him into the recesses of his own vessel, no matter that Castiel hadn’t fought. 

He’d expected it, after all. It was part of the anticipated price.

“Why are you here?” he asks, that spark of curiosity just enough to win out over the heavy apathy which weighed him down apparent months ago and hasn’t lifted since. “I’ve already given you everything.”

“Is that what you think?” Lucifer asks. He seems, perhaps, a little surprised.

“What more could you have?” Castiel asks, and a spike of irritation, small but precise, throbs beneath his ribs. 

Lucifer has taken him over, has taken him as a resource, and Castiel would rather be used up than continue this pointless existence. But if he must wait, he’d rather do so without being made to think.

“You could have let me have Sam Winchester,” Lucifer says.

At that, Castiel looks up, resolve sliding over him for long enough to answer.

“You won’t hurt Sam.”

“Yeah,” Lucifer says. “I got that from the whole…”

He lifts his free hand and twirls it in the air. It’s probably meant to mean something. 

“You know,” Lucifer goes on, “you only had to give me a few minutes, and that used outfit would have been ready for recycling. Did you know he let some other angel in? Who am I kidding? Of course you do. I got that from you.”

Castiel doesn’t remember telling Lucifer about Gadreel, and it’s strange he’s picked it up just by being in the same vessel, but no matter. It’s not important. 

“You won’t hurt Sam,” he says again, just in case it makes a greater impression, and because he’s already gone to the trouble of stitching this particular sentence together and isn’t sure he has the energy for another one.

“Yeah, well, you only had the juice to stop me because Sammy gave you a boost,” Lucifer says, and Castiel doesn’t bother to contradict him. “And if I’d known you’d perk up at the promise of getting inside one of the Winchesters, I’d have pushed you further down, snowflake.”

Castiel lets his gaze leave Lucifer and drift back to the TV. He doesn’t need reminding of the beating Lucifer gave him after pulling the Devil back from Sam. But, really, that’s not important, either. 

“Dean was here,” Castiel says, after a while. He isn’t sure why. Perhaps he wants Lucifer to deny it, to tell Castiel that he imagined Dean and Crowley both. 

“I will never understand you,” Lucifer says, as though that’s any sort of an answer to anything.

“Your understanding isn’t necessary,” Castiel tells him.

He never does ask how Lucifer had his lip bloodied. He doesn’t take note of when Lucifer leaves.

*****************************

Sam looks down at the third failed spell they’ve tried in as many days, frustration and smoke mingling to sting his eyes to near tears. 

“You said this one would throw an angel out of a vessel,” Dean says.

“I said the book claimed it would,” Sam says. 

He’s trawled through parts of the Bunker he wasn’t sure were accessible, has painstakingly translated at least five languages, and he knew before they started that there was an equal chance of this being some rambling tale with no real power. Still, he’ll try what he has to, if it means getting Cas back.

Now Lucifer’s already tried to take out Amara, there’s no reason for Cas to be playing host to the Devil. A sacrifice is pointless if it achieves nothing.

And Sam would have to be willfully ignorant not to see the way Dean’s hurting. He missed it at first, missed the ebb and depth of it, but he sees it now. Dean’s drowning in it. Sam has to find him a rope.

“Look again,” Dean says. “Find out what we did wrong.”

Sam doesn’t tell Dean that what they did wrong was make Castiel think saying yes to the Devil was a viable choice. Sam’s the one who first came up with that play, after all. 

Sighing, he sweeps the ashes of the spell aside and pulls the book toward him. He pretends not to notice when Dean gives up on his coffee and gets himself a glass of whiskey. 

****************************

Lucifer’s back.

Truth be told, Castiel can’t be sure the Devil ever left. It’s hard to hold on to such details, and he doesn’t care to try.

This time, Lucifer has that towel pressed to his temple. There’s another red blossom growing through the fabric.

“You really are just going to sit there and wait, aren’t you?” Lucifer asks. 

“Yes,” Castiel says. “Am I supposed to be doing something else?”

Lucifer smiles, barking out a laugh and setting the towel down on the table. There are more cuts there than Castiel thought. 

“What a specimen you are,” Lucifer says. “Giving yourself up for the cause, waiting it out. What do you think’s going to happen to you when it’s done? A triumphal return? And to where? Heaven? Or that hobbit hole the Winchesters live in? Tell me, Castiel, when you think of the paradise you lost, is it really this kitchen you see?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Castiel says. 

“You said I didn’t need to.”

And he can’t really argue with that. 

***************************

Dean lets himself drop to the bed, his leg stiff and aching. It’s mottled by bruises and Dean is honest enough to admit there was a minute there where he thought he wasn’t going to see his room at the Bunker again. It’s been a while since something as simple as a ghost has got him that badly, but this one…

Groaning, he shifts his weight and leans his head back against the headboard.

His body is still and so his mind spirals back to that one point he only fools himself he can forget. 

“Cas,” he says, letting his eyes slide shut. With his eyes shut, he can just about pretend Cas is there, in the room. Almost. “Cas, buddy, you need to tune in to these prayers. Stop leaving me hanging, here.”

He doesn’t bother with more. The rest is so huge it might choke him, a seamless, globular mass inside his guts, in his throat. He onces watched a video on-line, of a woman pulling cysts from people’s skin. They came out smooth, some of them, far larger than they’d looked with the skin whole. Dean’s grief is like that, growing larger than can be seen, filling up, something pulsing and slimy and wrong. 

He lasts another ten minutes before he heaves himself from the bed and goes for the whiskey.

**************************

This must be another time. Castiel is almost sure this is another time. 

Lucifer drips with blood, streaks of it matting his light hair and smearing across his forehead, his cheeks. He narrows his eyes at Castiel and his words are slurred.

“You really have no idea, do you?” Lucifer says. 

There’s a pause. Castiel wants to drift back to the TV, but Lucifer is dripping with blood. And swaying. Castiel is nearly sure that isn’t…isn’t right. He should do something about it. He waits to find out what that is.

Lucifer leans forwards, resting his elbows on the table. It’s probably meant to come across as casual, as confident. It doesn’t.

“You sit in here. Hide in here. And let me take the beating. Don’t you?”

Ah. That gives him a hint, at least.

“Beating?” Castiel asks. He thinks he manages to sound, if not interested, than at least aware he’s asked.

And Lucifer, the Light-bringer, the original rebel, the Prince of Darkness himself, barks out the sort of bitter laugh Castiel has heard on whiskey-soured breath as he’s traveled the country. 

“Beating?” Lucifer says. Mimics. Castiel is almost certain he doesn’t sound like that, so deep and rasping. “He asks it like he’s no part of this, like it’s not his body being pummeled into pulp.”

Castiel flinches as Lucifer surges up, sweeping the TV from the table and glaring at Castiel as the echoes of its breaking fill the room.

“Why did you do that?” Castiel asks.

He feels…jittery. On edge. He has no idea if he can make the TV return. Perhaps he can’t. Perhaps now he’ll be left here with nothing but his thoughts and his memories and-

“Why?” Lucifer asks. “Why?”

This close, the Devil’s eyes are ice. He really does burn cold. He leans closer and spits his words at Castiel.

“Because Aunt Amara’s twisting me into nothing in an attempt to get Daddy dearest’s attention, and we both know that isn’t me. Is it? Cas?”

Castiel stares back. He thinks he should want to run, but he can’t think where to, or what good it would do. He knew coming into this that there’d be no way out.

“Do you want to know what really grates?” Lucifer asks, and he must know Castiel has no answers for him. “What really grinds my gears? Hmm? I rebelled. All it took was not bowing down and kissing humanity’s collective feet, and I’m branded public enemy number one, and I was his favourite son. And for that, I’m locked in the Cage. No forgiveness, no reprieve, no getting out for good behavior. And why? Because I loved him better.”

Lucifer stiffens the fingers of his right hand to a point and stabs at his own chest on each of his last few words.

“But you?” he goes on. “You turn on Heaven, you kill more angels than I ever managed, and you get brought back. Again. And again. And again.”

Lucifer is close enough his breath ghosts over Castiel’s face, which is strange. They’re angels. They shouldn’t be so human to each other, here in a space which could be shaped in any way. Still, here they are.

“Tell me, little Castiel,” Lucifer says, his eyes shifting, dragging up and down Castiel’s face. “Is it because you went further than kissing their feet that you get to be so favored? And is it all humans, or just that one? Just Dean? Where exactly have you had those lips?”

“Enough!”

Castiel finds the fire to push back, to move valuable feet from his older brother and stand. It feels strange. He wonders how long he’s been here, sitting at this table. It doesn’t matter.

“Enough?” Lucifer asks. 

He sits back. Slumps. The Devil looks almost…defeated. Confused.

“I just want to know why Amara’s been torturing me for days and there’s been no sign of dear old dad, and why it’s your body she’s burning up, and you don’t even feel it.”

Castiel feels some of that confusion thread through him, slithering like grains of sand.

“Amara’s…she’s doing what?”

That can’t be right. Lucifer is going to fight the Darkness, and he’s going to win, and Castiel’s sacrifice will have been worth it. Dean will see it’s been worth it, and will be safe, and Sam will be safe, and Castiel will be done. 

He wants so badly to be done.

“I fought her,” Lucifer says, and there might be some element of gloating in there, or misery, or something else. “I fought her and I lost. And you gave yourself up, for nothing. And she’s ripping me apart, and you around me. And you don’t even know.”

And Lucifer is gone, and Castiel is alone in a kitchen filled with blood and broken TV parts, and his insides are ringing with loss.

********************************

Dean stops breathing when he sees the number on his phone, gesturing for Sam and stabbing to accept the call. 

Sam’s at his side in a moment, his mouth open to ask who it is, but Dean speaks over him in a rush.

“Cas? Cas, is that you? Cas?”

Dean feels Sam’s hand on his forearm, feels his brother’s fingers gripping him tight. The silence on the other end stretches.

“Dean?”

Silence breaks into shards and Dean presses his free hand to his mouth. He isn’t sure what he’s keeping in.

“Cas,” Sam says, leaning in and speaking into the phone at Dean’s ear. “That you? You okay? Do you need us to come get you?”

Cas’ voice is deep and rasping. He sounds strained. Weak. Determined.

“Lucifer lost,” he says, and Dean’s almost sure Cas is asking for confirmation. “He lost and Amara took him. Tortured him.”

Dean flinches. Torturing Lucifer means torturing Cas.

He manages to pry his hand free to let his words out.

“But you’ve got free,” he says, and tells himself the fierce jubilation isn’t too early. “You’ve got free and you can come home. Tell us where you are. We’ll leave now.”

“No,” Cas says, quick and certain. “No. I… Lucifer is gone. It’s just me now. I…I asked to be allowed to speak to you. Said it would… I thought you might…”

“Cas, you speak to me,” Dean says. Commands. “Speak to me, damn it. What are you saying? Allowed? By who? What-”

There’s a noise and Cas’ voice doesn’t come back. Instead, it’s Amara who speaks, smooth and powerful and warm.

“Dean? He said you’d want to hear from him, so I let him call you. Does that make you happy?”

She asks it like she’s sent him cookies. 

“Put Cas back on!” he says.

“I don’t understand what makes this one so special,” she says, and Dean hears choking in the background. “But if you love him, and God loves him, perhaps I’ll have more luck than I did with my nephew. I’ll see you soon, Dean.”

And the call ends. 

And Dean is left being held up by Sam, being held by Sam, and he had Cas there, on the phone, and now Cas is gone. Dean let those seconds slide, and they’re gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think. Having a writing slump, here. Comments help.


End file.
